


In The Jungle You Must Wait

by cyren2132



Category: Jumanji (1995)
Genre: Gen, Trick or Treat 2016, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 11:31:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8370574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyren2132/pseuds/cyren2132
Summary: Alan's first day in Jumanji is a day of discovery.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gaialux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaialux/gifts).



_“In the jungle you must wait, until the dice read five or eight.”_

Alan watched as his fingers, then his hands and his arms, dissipated like a thousand tiny grains of sand and went flying into the game’s center piece. He couldn’t help but scream as his feet left the ground and his world spun.

“Roll the dice!”

* * *

He was underwater. It rushed into his ears and his nose. It soaked his clothes, chilled his skin and stung his already split lip. His empty lungs burned as some long-ago instinct kept him from inhaling. He kicked furiously for the surface, breathing deeply as soon as he breached, only to let it out in a startled yell he could barely hear over the crashing thunder and pouring rain. Something brushed past him — under him. Water churned and splashed as double roars broke through the storm’s noise. Whatever was beneath him rose up, carrying him with it on its rough back.

He clung tight to a few coarse hairs, and in a flash of lightning he could see the back of its jowly head and round ears as it stared down another creature with a wide, toothy mouth big enough to swallow a man whole. Alan screamed again and the creature he was on reared back, sending him crashing into the water. The creatures charged at each other, and Alan swam. He wasn’t the strongest of swimmers — or the strongest of anything really — but he swam as hard and as fast as he could and didn’t stop until his fingers dug into the muddy riverbank.  
  
Gasping, he hauled himself up into the grass. The water monsters continued their fight, but it all seemed so distant to Alan now. Even with the rain and the thunder, there was part of him that felt like he could just stop and sleep for a hundred years. But there was a rustling in the tall weeds that caught Alan’s peripheral vision. He turned to it and saw two glistening eyes staring back.

Slowly, he rose to his feet and backed away. The eyes tracked him. There was more lightning. Something like a hyena — a giant, three-times-the-normal-size hyena, stared back at him, but Alan could also see a tree with a hollow maybe forty feet away. He ran.  
  
He ran, faster than he had ever run before, and just like when he was being chased by Billy and his gang, he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as the hyena followed. He could tell it was close.

Alan had nearly reached the tree when he slipped in the mud and went sprawling. He slid a few feet, and his fingers brushed the bark. The hyena bit at his pantleg, and he lashed out with a kick that caught the beast square in the nose. It yelped, and dropped his leg. Alan used the distraction to pull himself through the opening of the tree and scurried as far to the back as he could while the hyena scratched and scrabbled, trying to get through the narrow hole.  
  
Shaking, Alan pulled his knees to his chest and lowered his head, trying desperately to make himself as small as possible. He squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears with his hands.

“Roll the dice, Sarah,” he whimpered. “Roll the dice…”

* * *

  
Alan woke up slowly, first becoming aware of his stiff back and the crick in his neck. He was sitting. Had he fallen asleep on a chair in the sitting room? Birds chirped and he could smell an earthiness that would never be found in the pristine Parish estate. He rubbed his face, only to quickly pull his hand away as something smeared across his cheeks.

Mud.

River.

Monsters.

Tree.

**Jumanji.**

Alan’s eyes popped open, and he thrashed his arms out, hitting wood on all sides. He tried to move - to run - but the stiffness of his body allowed only for an ungraceful topple forward. His heart pounded. His breath came in short bursts. He squeezed his eyes shut again and was beginning to feel like he might pass out when his father’s face swam behind his eyelids.

“Oh, calm down,” he said. “Stop acting like a child.”

Alan forced himself to take a deep breath, hold it for three seconds, and let it back out slowly. He did it again, and again, until the sick feeling in his stomach subsided and his heart no longer blared in his own ears. His eyes crept open again. This wasn’t so bad, he told himself. He could tell through the hole in the hollow that it was a sunny day, and if the birds were singing it probably meant they weren’t about to be eaten, right? Steeling his nerve, he squeezed out of the tree and took in his surroundings.

The river to the south was gently flowing, seeming nothing like the nightmare he’d landed in. The rest of the area was surprisingly lush, if not a little muddy. Trees, tall grass and wildflowers lulled him into a sense of calm security, and Alan began to walk. The farther he got from where he started, the more he forgot how awful it had been.

Naturally, he tripped on a log.

He lurched forward, landing his flat on his face. He rolled onto his side and brought his knee to his chest, reaching down to rub at his throbbing ankle. He took a shuddering breath. It’d been hours by now. Surely Sarah would be rolling a 5 or an 8 soon. Or his parents would be home and figure out how to fix everything.

Alan closed his eyes, hoping that in the absence of those options, this was all just a bad dream. Going to a new school would be like entering a new jungle, after all. He’d read that in a dusty old dream analysis book once, he was sure of it. It was a dream.

Something moved nearby.

“I’m asleep, at home in bed.” Alan told himself. “It’s just the curtains in the wind, and I left the light on.”

He heard a low rumble.

“I skipped dinner,” he thought. “I’m just hungry is all. I should go downstairs and make a sandwich.”

But his stomach wasn’t growling. And the warm breeze of an August night couldn’t account for the chill in his bones or the shaking in his arms.

Swallowing deeply, he opened his eyes.

He was in a clearing of soft earth, but reedy grass and weeds he’d run through grew all around him. But there was something else. Something he couldn’t make out in the grass, like the painting he’d seen last year at the state fair. For a quarter, he could look at through special glasses and see a different image with depth and dimension. He paid his quarter, put on the glasses, and hadn’t seen anything. But Alan had the unique sensation that he’d be out more than a quarter if he couldn’t see this.

He strained his eyes at a patch of grass. Sweat began to pool at his brow. He did like the man at the fair had said and relaxed.  
  
He saw the nose first. A pink triangle outlined in black at the end of a tawny bridge. The nose led to two green eyes surrounded by a thick mane camouflaged in the browning grass. He closed his eyes and opened them again, but once he’d seen it, he couldn’t unsee it, only this time, he saw the full face. The white chin and - briefly - the sharp teeth as it licked its lips. Slowly, Alan rolled back onto his front and rose up on his hands and knees.

The lion tensed, and Alan bolted forward just as it pounced. He could feel its mighty paw swipe at his shoe. Before he could scream, he felt himself sinking into dirt. It swallowed his arms, sending him face-first into the earth. He squeezed his eyes closed again as it enveloped him whole.  
  
Alan was sinking. It was the most curious of sensations, like burying his feet at the beach, only instead of coarse grains of hot sand, it was soft, moist earth. And instead of his feet, it was everything. He held his breath as he traveled, and just when he thought he couldn’t hold it any longer, he felt his fingers poke through the other side as his body slowed to a halt. Scrabbling and wriggling, he was able to get his hands out until he could pull himself forward and come tumbling through a wall onto the hard packed earth of a tunnel floor.

A torch burned on the opposite wall and Alan quickly turned around to see where he had come from. The hole in the wall he’d come through had collapsed in on itself, leaving just a few clods of dirt on the floor.

He turned a circle, taking in his surroundings.

The passageway was narrow. One direction disappeared in inky darkness and at the other stood a small wooden door. He leaned in, giving it a closer look. A word was scratched into wood.

**Jumanji**

Beneath the word was a crude outline that, if Alan squinted, looked sort of like the token he had been playing back home. With a shaking hand, he pushed the door open and stepped through.

The room was dark, but the remnants of a fire  smoldered red in a small fireplace. More like a hole in the wall, lined with stone. A small pot was suspended by a rod over top. In the glow of the embers, he could just make out something like a spear next to the fire. He grabbed it and poked at the embers. A small log split in two, its insides glowing brighter than the rest. Alan laid flat on his stomach with face as close to fireplace as he thought wise and gently blew. A tiny flame appeared in the embers and Alan quickly sat up, rifling through his pockets. The first thing he found was a note addressed to his father from Mrs. Wilkerson. No doubt saying Alan was a distraction in class — even though HE was the one being bothered by Billy and his friends.

Alan set one edge into the flame until it caught, then tossed the whole note in. It burned short but bright enough for Alan to see some large fronds, sticks and small logs in an opposite corner. Using the found supplies, Alan had a fire going within minutes, and as the flames licked the bottom of the pot, a fresh smell began to fill the air. A thin broth with a few floating vegetables was beginning to warm, and Alan’s stomach growled hungrily at the sight of it.

Glancing around, he saw a small tin cup on a makeshift table, and he snatched it up, blowing a few dust particles out of the inside, and dipped it into the pot.

The broth was barely warm and tasted more like grass than anything, but in that moment, it was delicious, and Alan drank his fill. It soothed his stomach and eased his nerves, and when he felt calm again, Alan took another look around the room, mentally working out what to say when its occupant returned.

A small straw-filled mattress sat against one wall, blanketed with a fur Alan couldn’t identify. In the corner, a half-made pair of soft boots covered in a thin layer of dust sat in a corner along with garb for someone larger than him.

He went back to the table where he’d found the cup. In his haste, he had completely overlooked the rest of its contents, including a small leather-bound journal, open to a page about midway through. He knew it was rude, but his curiosity got the better of him, and he picked it up, looking over the page.

 

>  Dear Benjamin,  
>  I didn’t quite make it back before the storm, but the drenching was worth it for all the root I collected.

  
Alan shivered slightly in his own clothes, still damp and muddy from the river and rain. Even the paper — thicker than most Alan had seen — bore stains of watermarks that weren’t quite dry. He kept reading.

 

> I still feel silly writing you like this, but I think if I didn’t, I’d go mad. It’s been weeks, but perhaps time moves differently here. If that’s the case, and you ever see this journal, I apologize for my earlier ranting. I hope

  
The letter stopped mid sentence. Alan frowned and flipped through the pages. There were several letters addressed to Benjamin - signed by a Caleb - including one that was just an angry scrawl of _HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO ROLL TWO DICE!_ As Alan went farther back, the handwriting changed. Then it changed again and again until turning into a language he didn’t recognize, as if people trapped in Jumanji had been using this book to record their thoughts. He flipped back to Caleb’s entries, and that was when he noticed it. In tiny script in the top righthand corner of the paper was a date.

  
September 12, 1869.

1869.

**1869?!**

That was more than a hundred years ago! But looking over the page again and the state of the room when he entered, it seemed like Caleb had been here just hours before Alan entered. The root vegetables next to the fire were fresh, not 100 years old.

Alan set the book back down on the table and began to pace, stepping gingerly on his sore ankle.

_Perhaps time moves differently here._

Alan rubbed at his face and ran his hand through his hair. This was the stuff of pulpy science fiction novels and comic books, not real life. But then, one day ago, he wouldn’t have said board games that move on their own and suck people into them weren’t real life, either.

He took a deep breath. Okay. So, what if time did move differently here? What if a day in Jumanji was a minute in the real world? Alan wasn’t very good at math, but even he knew 100 years’ of real-world time would have been more than enough Jumanji-time for the journal to dry and the room’s fire to go out completely.

Maybe everything in Jumanji stopped when there wasn’t a player and picked up where it left off when there was?

Alan was beginning to feel lightheaded. His breaths were fast and shallow, and he forced himself to stop moving around the room and breathe deeply, just like his mother had taught him.

He counted to 10 and looked at the book again. It didn’t matter how time moved in Jumanji, though he hoped it moved faster than back home. It didn’t matter if time stopped when nobody was trapped inside. All that mattered was that he was here, and he didn’t think anyone was coming back to this room, wherever it was.

Wherever he was.

Alan had no clue where he was in general or in relation to where he’d started when he landed in the middle of a river. He had no clue what had sucked him into the earth and deposited him at this door or who lit the torch that burned brightly when he got there.

But he had a book. A record of people who had been here before.

Alan looked to his fire, added a small log and gave it a poke to brighten the room even more, and settled onto the small mattress with the book, turned to the first entries in a language he knew and began to read.

He’d gotten no more than a few pages in when he realized the book could be a literal life-saver.

Previous Jumanji players had written about the plants that were safe to eat and the ones that would leave him curled up on the floor in gut-twisting agony.

They’d written about ways to craft tools and weapons to make life easier and protect themselves from the wildlife. One person had even begun to draw a map across two pages, noting various landmarks and territories for Jumanji’s animal kingdom. Alan found the river he assumed he’d landed in and a cave that seemed much to far away to be where he was now. There was a small dot next to the lion pride that he couldn’t decipher, so he continued forward.

It was when he got to the neat script of a girl named Beth — the first to begin using the journal in letter format — that the more mysterious aspects of the world began to make sense. 

>   
>  Dear Father,
> 
> I fell in another hole today. It was the third one to bring me back to the cave door. I feel a little bit like Alice, making her way to Wonderland. I’m grateful for these ‘rabbit holes’ that bring me back here. This one, however, I found right next to a strawberry bush. I really wanted a strawberry. But I suppose I’ll take having to walk back if it means I have an easy escape from the monkeys near the east end.
> 
> I still haven’t figured out how or why these work. I just know that time and distance have no meaning when I fall in one. Wherever I was, I always end up back here. Perhaps it’s God, giving me a fighting chance to survive. If that’s the case, I fear the devil is working here, too. It’s the only explanation I have for the peculiar sensation that comes over me each day. The one that makes me feel like I have to leave the safety of this shelter and go out into Jumanji, where all manner of wicked awaits.
> 
> Please, Father, I’m sure Caitlyn has hidden this game after I disappeared, but I hope you’ll find it and bring me home.

  
Alan felt the ground above his head shake and rumble, like a train going overhead. Clods of dirt fell from the ceiling and landed around him. Startled, he dropped the book and rose to his feet. It was a stampede. When it stopped, he picked the book back up and was startled at the words he saw.

  
**BEWARE VAN PELT**

  
He was back to Caleb’s entries. 

>   
>  I don’t know what Van Pelt has against me. When I first saw him, I was relieved to find another person, but for some reason, he hates me. It’s not enough that he’s tried to kill me every time he’s seen me, I think now he’s actively hunting me. I don’t know if he’s a construct of the game - another challenge meant to destroy us before we make it out — or maybe he’s a player who’s been trapped here for too long. If there’s one Jumanji game, what’s to say there aren’t more? Maybe something happened to the other players in his game and it was never finished. I just don’t know. But I’ll be staying away from him, if I want to survive.

  
In the distance, Alan heard a gunshot. While he had been reading, he’d begun to think of Jumanji as little more than a story. Surely by the time he’d reached the end of it, he’d be home. But he wasn’t home, and everything felt so very real again. And the threats seemed worse than when he’d arrived, which Alan hadn't thought would be possible.

He gulped and put the book down. He was beginning to feel a nervous energy in his chest. His fingers tapped a random beat into his leg, and he wondered if this was the peculiar sensation Beth had mentioned. There was an undeniable part of him that wanted to get out and see daylight. Smell the fresh air. But he knew -- even after being here less than a day -- that out there everything was wild and monstrous. In here was safe. But he wanted out just the same.

Alan stood and was halfway to the door when he stopped himself, swallowing down the instinct to run out the door and down the dark tunnel to wherever it would lead. Instead, he walked over to the corner and looked at the outfit. Something made him doubt it had belonged to Caleb. It looked like something someone who’d lived a long time in a jungle before ending up here would make. Then he glanced down at the boots. Tears began to well in his eyes as he picked one up.

His father would know how to finish making it. Alan carried the boot back back to the mattress, cradling it in his arms like a child, and sat down. Slowly, he traced the stitching that was done. He’d seen his father repair many a shoe before his company grew into what it became. Maybe Alan could figure it out. Sniffling, he set the shoe aside. He glanced back to the table where a small pencil sat, and retrieved it. He gripped it tightly, still fighting the urge to run.

As he sat down in the desk chair, he opened the journal to first page past Caleb’s last. 

> Dear Mom and Dad…


End file.
